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The Web: young people today don’t know they’re born

Friday 9 September 2005

I was thinking the other day about the Web, and how useful it would’ve been in the mid-eighties when I was at University. Not for plagiarism, but just for access to primary texts – of which there’s lots in an English Literature degree. For example, I ordered the only book of the poems of Robert Henryson, which took 4 weeks to arrive and cost me £13 – when a week’s rent on my room was £12.50. If the Web had been around then, I could’ve just Googled for Henryson’s poetry, printed it out and drunk the cash.

Indubitably, though, the biggest boon that the Web has given young men is easy access to porn. Yet the Web giveth and the Web taketh away: what young people today have lost is the adventure and camaraderie that were necessary in the the hunt for masturbatory fodder.

When I was a teenager there were three methods of accessing porn:

Borrowing it from a mate. This was the simplest method, but had a significant disadvantage: the worrying insight into your mates’ sexual preferences which could be deduced by studying each model and assessing the relative levels of genetic material splashed on them.

Borrowing from a mate was also the favoured excuse when your mum made her annual foray underneath your bed with the vacuum cleaner and found your stash. Shez legendarily told his mum that “I’m looking after it for Bruce in case his mum finds it”. Lying sod. Like I would have owned a half a dozen compendia of polaroids of portly houswives from Nottingham in the nude.

Buying it. This method was complex: you combined your dinner money with your mates, and the tallest friend rode off on his bicycle to the shop owned by the newsagent that we judged least likely to be acquainted with our parents.

Then Tall Mate would peruse the top shelf surreptitiously (while The Newsagent attempted not to snigger) and produce a pocket full of small change in exchange for a copy of “Club International”, “Fiesta” or “Rustler” which would then be gawped over by the whole gang who would vie for the right to be second in line to take it home. (The purchaser always had the right to take it home the first night.)

Finding it. Now, this may be confined solely to the West Midlands. (Or maybe it was more widespread? Please let me know.) For years, I’d be mucking around in the Woods climbing trees with my mates, and one of us would randomly discover a stash of hidden nudie pics behind a tree or under a bush – ranging from the single page of Reader’s Wives to the treasure of the carrier bag full of really hard-core stuff in some scandinavian language.

In the same way that Americans have a myth of a man called “Johnny Appleseed” who travelled around America generously planting apple trees for the sustenance and enjoyment of those who came after him, I like to think of a kindly philanthropic character whom I call “Johnny Wankmag” who travelled all the Woods, coppices and riverbanks in the area between 1979 and 1983, selflessly secreting porn magazines under bushes in order to provide comfort and tumescence to teenage boys.

But these days, all a 14 year old has to do is to is go to Google and type in “Asian Babes” or “Big Norks” or “Shaved German Nurses in Aqualungs” – or whatever is his particular fantasy du jour – and, hey presto!, unlimited source-material for self-abuse.

Of course, it could be that Johnny Wankmag was actually Tim Berners-Lee himself, and went on to invent the Web as a more effective method of achieving his noble mission while being easier on his shoe leather. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the ceaseless pursuit of filth is no longer a shared rite of passage for the modern teenage boy.

26 Responses to “
The Web: young people today don’t know they’re born ”

Surely you have missed out:
Having a mate who was a paperboy (no rustling jokes please) who had regular unobserved access to the top shelf – or failing that – failed to deliver certaing “subscriptions” knowing damn well the subscribers would never complain and
Another mate who worked behind the counter in a video shop (remember the dilemma – VHS or Betamax?)and could access stuff that would send you blind.
Names have been omitted to proctect the innocent – ish.
Now where did I leave my glasses…..

You know, that finding story, it’s all true. I found two ‘jazz mags’ on a paper round, and incidentally also encountered the ‘mum finding mags under bed’ scenario. The ting is, I kept those mags for years. They were like the first frends you make at school or college. You can’t ditch them, they have a special place in your heart (or wherever). Nevertheless, at some time you have to de-clutter. You could throw in a bin, but the philanthropist approach seems right somehow! Just pick your place/time (late at night, on a pub thoroughfare – guaranteed not to fall in to tender hands/minds). Anyway, I’ve said too much.

Where did you grow up, Ian? Outside the West Midlands? Maybe we could track the movements of Johnny Wankmag and find out if it all started in London where Tim Berners-Lee grew up? If we can prove that TBL is Johnny Wankmag, he’d almost certainly get his knighthood upgraded to a Dukedom, or even be made Lord Tim …

I can confirm that the abandoned porn phenomenon extended to Sussex woodland in the late 70s / early 80s.

As an aside, I had a mate whose mum overheard him saying to a friend that he needed some new jazz mags. She thought he’d developed a healthy interest in free-form music, so trotted down to the local newsagent to ask if they had any jazz mags…

My Johnny Wankmag experience (JWME?): recently, I went down the stairs to take out the trash, and the bin was topped with around 10 kg of Danish porn magazines. “Kid’s gold”, I thought, and put my trash in the other bin, not to over-soil the goods.

And, too, I was on a car-ride home to Sweden from another unnamed Scandinavian country, and stopped to take a leak. Trudged up an enbankment – could not perform in front of the audience in the car. Then I had my JWME: I hooted back to the car: “Look at this!” Johnny had taken the time to spread out around 10-12 magazines on the ground, so they formed a large patch of… glossy, illustrated paper. At whom was that piece of good-will aimed? A Finnish woman in our company said: “What, did you find stuff like this everywhere in the forests?” All the others: “… Yes.”

I can confirm that porn found in bushes is not just a west midlands thing. Being a londoner it was in dense bushes in the park but it is the same thing I am sure. I have always wondered what kind soul left it lying there for us/me to find.

Having gone to boarding school there was a pretty decent jazz mag market – value was usually based on the relative quality of the magazine as well as the condition. A brand monkey-spanking new copy of Club International would carry far more marketable value than a spunk-spattered Escort or Razzle, for instance. Playboy was always a prized item, but as there was zero flange I was never on the buyers’ list. Some of the mags that entered circulation had been purchased by elder brothers or tall mates, and others had been left behind by various ‘Johnny Wankmags’ from Scotland to Devon.

I still pick up my copy of Club this day – the missus understands that the no-shag nights need to be covered in some way – and in spite of the Internet I still think that there is nothing better than having a glossy mag in your hands!

You youngsters don’t know yer born! Why,in my day there was no serendipitous finds, back in the 60s the playground porn barons would charge 2 “Passing Clouds” fags just for 1 distressed parade magazine. They were black & white, all the minge airbrushed out, or worse still, concealed behind a flowerpot. Nasty shock for a lad getting hand up knix for the first time! But it never done us any harm… EEEeee…

I too, can confirm that Johnny Wankmag operated as far afield as Paisley, in the west of Scotland. When I was growing up there during the 1960s and early 70s, we would also regularly find stashes of discarded second-hand gentleman’s art pamphlets, typically under hedgerows. I still recall the shudder of wondering if the mags’ owner would come back and catch you thumbing his Fiesta, but of course he never did. I now know that it’s a guilt thing. After a while, you feel ashamed of what you’re doing for the 43rd time with that dog-eared old copy of Big ‘Uns Monthly, and you feel the need to ditch your stash. Leaving it in a convenient location for hormone-afflicted youths to recover is a traditional act of kindness, and the urge to do so is acquired sort of organically by a generation of gentlemen as they make their way through life’s choppy waters of sexual turmoil. And it’s green too. Re-cycling ? Yep, we did it.

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